Saturday, November 22, 2008

Bacoso's been posting some great Eddie Palmieri over at OIR which has encouraged me to drag out my latin albums again .... Eddie's a genius and a revolutionary giant. Latin had never seen harmonies like this before - Palmieri pushed at both the latin boundaries and the jazz boundaries at the same time without letting them wash each other out.

Palmieri's great early 70s albums like "Superimposition" and "Justicia" began to mix up genres in a way that reflected the cultural gumbo of New York itself. He began to really stretch his own boundaries in the studio with 'The Sun Of Latin Music"in 1973, particularly with the sprawling 15 minute "Un Dia Bonito", which begins with atmospheric textures and dramatic pacing, then works through an extraordinary, almost classical cross-harmonic brass buildup before morphing into a latin stormer. (I've added this as a bonus track in the comments). The album netted him his first Grammy award, which was in fact the first-ever Latin Grammy.

Later in 1973 he released "Sentido", which in tracks like "Condiciones que Existen" began to incorporate the funk textures from the album by his "Harlem River Drive" project, once again a distinctly New York cultural stew that can also be heard on the live "Sing Sing" albums from 1971, and influences other live recordings like the "University Of Puerto Rico" album.

Less funk and more cuban textures in this album from 1974, but it's still from the period when Palmieri had most of his considerable irons in the fire at the same time, moments of descarga - listen to everyone go crazy in the 12-minute standout track "Cobarde"; piano atmospherics and experimentation in "Random Thoughts"; percussion to die for in "Oyelo Que Te Conviene".

There's the salsa of "Un Puesto Vacante" with Lalo Rodriguez tearing up on the vocals, some boogaloo strains in "Kinkamache", and finally jazz and even big band textures in "Resemblance". That last track has quite a different lineup of jazzers including Ron Carter, Jeremy Steig, Steve Gadd, and Eddie Martinez on the rhodes.

And all the way through there's Eddie himself, always unexpected and exploratory in his piano progressions, and writing incendiary brass parts like no-one else can. He was apparently never fully satisfied with getting this album finished, but Coco Records put it out anyway - thus the title. He won his second Grammy award with this one.

WAV and 320 MP3 versions of "Unfinished Masterpiece" are at the bottom of the post, also a bonus of the aforementioned track "Un Dia Bonita" from "The Sun Of Latin Music".

Also check out the discography below for 53 more Eddie Palmieri-related albums.

Nice one SImon. Not from his peak period - Un Dia Bonita takes us back there, thank you very much - but definitely good to hear (first time to these ears).And, as always, so much to learn from the background discography. TN

Wow! This post is a tremendous service and resource to those of us who appreciate Eddie. Thanks so much. Sorry it took me 14 months to find it but thanks for keeping it here all this time. If I am finding it this much later and leaving a comment, you can bet there are ten more like me who don't write anything, so, let me thank you on their behalf and encourage you to keep up your excellent work in the effort to preserve jazz.

Thank you very much, especially for the meticulous descriptions for each and every artist. It's so lively to not only being able to listen to this wonderful music, but having the chance to learn so much from knowledgable peers :-)